Scottish Catholic aid worker says Zambia’s latest food crisis is ‘different from previous ones’
LEICESTER, United Kingdom – A Scottish aid worker says panic reigns in Zambia as the southern African country suffers its worst food crisis in decades.
Zambia has been hit by a series of frequent and deadly droughts, floods and heatwaves, which the United Nations says have caused the driest farming season in more than 40 years, with crops wiped out and livestock killed.
Aisling Gallacher is an aid worker with SCIAF, the international relief agency of the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and recently visited the country.
“As I got off the plane, I saw a line of 200 people at the supermarket. Inside the store, bags of corn were limited per person. People were running. Panic was in the air. I knew it was different from before,” she said.
On February 29, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema declared a state of national disaster and emergency due to the severe drought, which has left more than 6.6 million people, including 3.5 million children, in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
“This drought requires concerted efforts. Far too many families in key affected districts are struggling to feed their families. Evidence indicates that a nutrition crisis is looming in provinces where hunger and nutritional deficiencies are high if concrete preventive measures are not taken now,” said Beatrice Mutali, the UN Resident Coordinator in Zambia, on 28 June.
A SMART (Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions) survey conducted in May found that more than half of households in Zambia were already suffering from moderate to severe hunger and estimated that over the next 12 months, 51,948 children under five in the 84 drought-affected districts would suffer from severe wasting and another 276,000 children under five would suffer from moderate wasting.
The SMART survey also found that nearly 112,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women were suffering from wasting, of which around 13,000 were facing its most severe form.
Gallacher said that with SCIAF she has been visiting Zambia regularly for the past five years, but “nothing prepared me for my latest trip.”
“On the road to Mongu (the capital of Zambia’s Western Province) – a usually spectacular journey through lush, green landscapes during the rainy season – I saw field after field of dried maize. Crispy, yellow, dead,” she said.
Gallacher said there was no rain on the horizon and climate shocks had made farming in Zambia extremely difficult.
“During the last rainy season, there were only ten days of rain here. It should have rained every day from November to the end of February,” she said.
She also spoke about meeting a woman named Kashueka, a single mother with four children.
“I met her near her family’s field which was full of dead corn. Kashueka was forced to pick wild fruits and dig for roots just to put a meal on the table,” she said, adding that SCIAF helped her with corn, cooking oil and soybeans.
“It gave her children enough energy to go to school. But that support only lasted three months, and when the rains didn’t start coming, farmers like Kashueka knew there would be no harvest in May. The crops she had planted had died,” Gallacher said.
“In Glasgow, my children go to school with full stomachs. Hers couldn’t go to school because they were too hungry. I came home determined to do what I could to help,” said the Scottish aid worker.
Gallacher also visited Kabwe, the capital of Zambia’s Central Province, where SCIAF’s expert partners have been implementing complex agricultural programmes for several years. These projects focus on training in organic farming skills, as well as providing pigs and goats for natural manure.
“It was like a different world,” Gallacher said.
“Despite the drought and famine that are spreading across the country, I have seen that communities are coping well. People have told me that they will have enough food for their families despite the drought. They have grain reserves that they can rely on; they have access to water through specially dug boreholes; and they have money set aside for emergencies,” she said.
She explained how SCIAF’s aid work has helped countries develop better systems to combat the effects of climate change, using Kabwe’s work as an example.
“So it was the same country, the same conditions, but people had enough to eat because they had been taught to adapt to the vagaries of nature. This is proof that the gifts of the Scots make a real and lasting difference in the world. This is proof that SCIAF has a real solution to world hunger,” Gallacher said.
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